Chapter 53

 

Fan of the Flames

 

 

For Fiona Weller, the final camelback-breaking straw came on Sunday the 16th of April, in the “playroom” at Sunny Squash Court.  She and Robin and PoonElly had been summoned there (as had Sheila-Q, grounded at Castle Quirk for the weekend) to hear a song freshly composed by Britt, who said she might be willing to perform it with Downbite at the AnaRCHonda Pit’s all-ages-on-stage show.  Fiona, already nettled by this take-it-or-leave-it mandate, was primed to blow her dyed-black stack when she found Spacyjane Groh and Isabel Carstairs waiting in the “playroom,” flanking their hostess and her chrome-plated Gibson SG that had britt spelled out on it in mother-of-pearl letters.  Hostess and flankers were clad in star-spangled midnight-blue leotards with wispy wraps of indigo gauze: as unpunk a stage presence as could be conjured up, but undeniably eyesnaggable as they harmonized on—

 

Crashing the wrecks!   Crashing the wrecks!     Crashing the wreck’s parteeee...   No need for invitation or welcome noise   When you can barge into the Land of Toys! No E-ticket necessary at the gate   No endorsement of the mess you’ll make!   Bogeymen demolishing ETTT-i-quette   Mutilating manners without regret!     Go breaking down the door     Of Toyland ever more Wreak operatic havoc for Bedlam’s sake!   Uninvited entrance is the way to go   Unasked-for entry is the key     Unincited chaos is the way to toy—   Crashing the wrecks!   Crashing the wrecks!     Crashing the wreck’s parteeee...

 

Whoopjamboreehoo by appreciative PoonElly.

 

To which the Ghastly Trio responded with a twitch of their indigo gauze-wraps in a group curtsy.  Not a curse, but a curtsy.

 

(There is no curtsying in punk music!!)

 

That all this left Fiona speechless was not astonishing.  More of a surprise was Robin’s being dumbfounded—especially after her earlier offer to break Britt’s neck for not committing to stick with Downbite.  “(You know doing that’ll never pin her down,)” Fiona had mutter-reiterated at the time.

 

“Your choice,” the still-unpinned Britt told them here and now.  “If Downbite doesn’t want to back us up when we sing this at the Pit, the Nodules will—Charlie Hoarse’s signed off on it.”

 

“...lemme talk to Monte Secchi,” Robin managed to croak.

 

“Go ahead,” sleepy-smiled Britt.  “Jasp dropped off a demo tape at Cobwebs & Strange yesterday afternoon.  Sylvia Doad wants to hear us do it live.  Wrecks Humberg thinks the song’s a tribute to him and Demolisher the cat.”

 

On which bowled-over note the Sister Dopesters beat a retreat—minus Poon, who stayed behind to join the Ghastly Trio in their gruesome vocalization.  “Been wanting to sing again with this Spacygal ever since New Year’s Eve!”

 

There goes my last nerve, Fiona’d mutter-moaned at the time.  “(...how’ll you get home?)” she succeeded in asking here and now, PoonElly’s Le Heap still being out of commission.

 

“Oh, Dennis can give her a lift along with the rest of us,” said Spacyjane.

 

“Plennnn-teeee of room in his Wagggg-onmaster,” oozy-cooed Isabel.

 

“Fine by me!  Got any spare bawdysuits?” enthused Poon.

 

Fiona tried to singe her with a blistering glare, but Poon’s spiked-limeade head was turned away and Feef caught sight instead of a China doll like a shrink-rayed replica of Izzy-Whizzy—even wearing a miniature star-spangled midnight-blue leotard as it straddled Britt’s guitar case.  If that weren’t enough to chill the spine, the Dopesters no sooner stepped out of the “playroom” onto the loggia than they heard a FWUPP—and saw a heavy metal-tipped projectile sink into the lawn a few feet from their feet.

 

“Fore,” called Split-Pea Ersen, unhurriedly.

 

Robin was then able to vent her unarticulated-at-Britt rage, upon Split-Pea and also upon Dennis Desmond, who juggled a couple of Jarts like lethal Indian clubs as he offset Robin’s vent with a yammer-torrent: “Don’t mind us, we’re drilling for Sunny Squash oil if not greasy kid stuff if not unctuous pimple cream to-market-to-market-to-sell-to-fat-pigs as the next Smearasil!  ‘Such strong medicine guarantees fewer pustular carbuncles in just five days or your money back’—”

 

Which was extra-uncalled-for, since Robin’s acne had gotten far less noticeable over the past year.  But she frothed at the mouth as of old, denouncing Dennis as she used to castigate Roger Mustardman (“you can’t say his name without calling him a turd”) or Diesel Erle that time he’d unwisely told her “Chicks can’t rock.”  After the latter gaffe Robin had nearly turned herself and Fiona into roadkill by rage-racing past stop signs and through red lights on her Margutta scooter.  She wouldn’t dare subject her Sweet Babboo to perilous recklessness, though, even if it was a Plymouth Fury; so Feef waited for her to stomp around Sunny Squash’s guest parking area till she came off the boil and simmered down.  During this interval Feef cooled her own heels by more-than-tapping/less-than-kicking an ornamental post with the Deep Purple combat boots Poon had bought her last summer on the Sunset Strip.  And which each tap/kick she faced up a little more to the harshly horrendous quandary staring the Dopesters in their faces.

 

Slim to no chance that Monte would let Downbite play the Pit without Britt—and even if he did, they’d again be missing a lead guitar.  Maybe a rhythm guitar too, if Sheila’s grounding got extended.  Absolutely NO chance that Downbite would kiss-and-make-up with Epic Khack (gag! retch!) even if Tayser’d allow it.  So what then?  Could they use Julep Muller and her disconcerting off-key harp?  Or be like the Screamers in L.A. and do without strings of any sort—rely on hardcore bass and drums, plus Fiona’s full-tilt boogie-diva voice?

 

Forget it.  Britt had outflanked them every damned which way, even at Cobwebs & Strange.  By recruiting Izzy-Whizzy (whom Britt’d once sent into a howling fit) and the Space Cadet (whom Joss and Vicki said used to abhor Izzy).  Bringing in those two was even more outrageous than if Britt had held onto Lenny Otis and Dino Tattaglia (heave! choke!)—to which insult she’d added injury by beguiling Poon into a Ghastly Quartet.  Group-curtsying in lowcut leotards (out of which Poon would spill even farther than Isabel) was the polar opposite of punk—but would sure as hell “wow” a ratty-sloppy-crusty-dingy male audience.  And if Sheila-Q did escape from Castle Quirk in time, she too might go Ghastly—Q actually liked Britt; had smuggled her into the Rosa Dartles against Feef’s better judgment; then done it again with Downbite!

 

(Lot-more-than-tap/very-nearly-kick booted toe against ornamental post.)

 

So: up shit creek was where the Dopesters were stranded.  Refuse to Ghast out, and lose the chance to play the Pit.  Or concede, submit, and be reduced to backing up Britt’s gruesome glee club—turning Downbite into the New Christy Smooch Smarks.  Which’d be even more intolerable than two years ago, when Feef had feared getting elbowed out of the Rosa Dartles.  “(I know I won’t be the one people look at first,)” she’d mutter-told Vicki at the time.  “(I’m okay with that, I don’t want ‘em thinking I’m ‘cute.’  But... I don’t wanna be invisible, either.  See?  Or shoved aside.  This is my band; I’m supposed to sing lead; they’re supposed to do my songs.  Y’know?)”

 

Even if Vicki hadn’t known, she’d definitely sympathized.  Been a sweetheart; given Fiona a makeover along Joan Jett lines; helped balance out the Dartles to the point where Feef had been able to stand up to Britt’s abysmal gaslight that decisive day in the VW Media Center.

 

I was the Lizard King; I could do anything...

 

But that’d been there and then, while this was here and now.

 

Robin approached, more-than-tapping/less-than-pounding a percussive cadence with her hands on her thighs: a sure sign of regained self-control.  “Okay, I’m good to drive.  Let’s vattene outta here.  Got any good ideas?”

 

About what they might try if Monte wouldn’t cooperate?  “(Only bad ‘uns.)”

 

“Well think of something else, Spooky!  Counting on you!”

 

Not just bad ideas but insidious ‘uns—such as having the Ghastlies don leather jackets over their leotards and leave them wide open.  This’d allow spillover to still “wow” the male crowd, yet frame it with superficial punkishness.  Poon would jump at the opportunity to combine her closetful of leatherwear with chesty exposure—then, like a female Tigger, “bounce” Izzy-Whizzy and the Space Cadet into leatherwearing compliance.  Britt would then be forced to go along with this stipulation, or risk looking like a Cheese Who Stands Alone...

 

...and just how, exactly, would that bother Britt Groningen?  She was Dutch Edam incarnate: cloaked in unpindownable red wax.  The soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front had regarded Edam cheese as a sign of trouble ahead, vile times were coming, a hell of a bombardment...

 

Fiona began to play air bass, tapping out the tempo (lightly; no kicks or stomps) on the Plymouth Fury’s floorpan.  Robin, recognizing the beat, matched it on her Sweet Babboo’s steering wheel; and together the Sister Dopesters began to wail

 

Think twice about the road you choose    and where you might be led Or else you’ll have the Razzlin’ Blues    that fill your heart with dread...

 

*

 

Five days later a VTHS team bus beat its own retreat from “the Big Mountain”—Athens Grove High School—like Napoleon’s army lowtailing away from Russia.  Though it’d been a chilly mid-40s afternoon, the Lady Olympians had scorched the earth beneath the Lady Gondoliers; also the Screaming Eagles of Multch East, this having been a triangular meet.  But no one’d expected those Sullen Ciphers to do more than show up, in sparser numbers than the other teams; these days Multch East made only token efforts against everyone except their bêtes noire at Multch North.

 

The G‑Girls of Vanderlund were—should’ve been—a different story.  Yet their asses had gotten trampled in all but one event; and that single exception was not the two mile run, in which Vicki’d finished a dismal sixth behind Jeannette Crittenden, Jeanine Greeley, Jeanne Janssen (three of the Four Genies of the Apocalypse), Rhonda and Alex.  Even the two Sullen Ciphers from Multch East had run neck-and-neck-and-neck with her, closing just fractionally behind.  And Vicki’s time was a comparatively sluggish 13:45.6.

 

Now she slumped beside Laurie, across the aisle from Alex and the ungrounded Sheila-Q, in the rookie (i.e. rear) section of the silent frigid bus.  No rookie’d come in better than fourth in any event today; only two veterans had done better than third place.  Louisa’d lost both the shot put and discus to Nadine Rugova, that Frostymug who’d slammed the volleyball into Vicki’s face last September.  And Nadine was herself just a rookie soph, mortifying Louisa who (it was whispered) hadn’t so much as blinked since those upset losses.  The lone Gondolier victory had been Snickers Paar’s in the 220 low hurdles, beating both Heather Hendon and Olympian ace Bernice Ionides, who went on to edge Snickers in the 110 high hurdles with Heather an almost-distant third.  (She, it was whispered, hadn’t opened her eyes since those upset losses.)

 

Vicki let out a long ragged rooted-to-the-spot exhalation, as Cheryl’d done when dumped by Stu Nugent.  The only consolation of the whole sorry tri-meet was not having had to risk dropping a baton in the mile relay.  Roxie, Mumbles, Lisa and Sheila had lost that event without Vicki’s “help,” to an Athens Grove foursome anchored by the fourth Apocalypser, Gina Conti.  Who, afterward, had given Vicki a really weird look—as if finding her blameworthy for something.  Not for the Olympian relay victory, at any rate.

 

The bus pulled up at VTHS and the G-Girls trudged out into the twilight’s last gleaming.  Faithful Avery was waiting there in his Mustang Boss, but Sheila-Q (not so ungrounded that she had permission to be picked up by anybody’s boyfriend) peeled away from the pack to start bitching at her brother Burke before “Baa-Baa,” black sheep of the Quirks, could bitch at Sheila for needing to be picked up on such an unseasonably cold night.

 

Meanwhile Laurie was being introduced to Avery: “I’ve heard good things about you,” she offered, semi-shyly.  “I hope you’ve heard good things about me.”

 

This lightened the post-tri-meet gloom, making Vicki smile and Alex (who’d been pretending not to listen to Quirk-invective) laugh.  “Sure,” said Bomber, holding the Boss door so Laurie and Alex could squeeze into the backseat before Vicki took shotgun.  Once inside, she asked him “So how did your game go?”

 

“Blanked ‘em three-zip.”

 

The varsity baseball squad had gone to Emery Ridge to make up a rained-out date.  Cedric Grier’d pitched his first shutout like a regular Ferguson Jenkins (not to be confused with Roxie).  Bomber himself’d gotten two hits in four at-bats and, though left on base both times, had brought in Chewy DeWitt with a sacrifice fly in the eighth inning.  The Scarlet Royals had stranded nine baserunners to the G-Men’s six.

 

It all sounded like an exercise in tedium, and (Vicki suspected) Avery made it deliberately more so by describing the game in his how-to-dissect-an-earthworm drone.  This play-by-play recap acted like Bufferin, dulling the pain of the girls’s blowout defeat, which Avery had again caught the so-to-speak tail-end of since his own game ended so much earlier.  Thankfully he’d missed Vicki’s misperformance in the two-mile run.  And he hadn’t been so appalled by what he did see to forsake the G‑Girls by not driving back to VTHS to collect three of them there—though it was the usual waste of time, gas, and tire-rubber to force everyone to return to school after the meet.

 

Laurie got delivered to Grouseland Street and Alex to Sprangletop Road, each leaving Bomber’s car with somewhat more spring to her step than when she’d climbed in.  The Boss then lingered awhile by Lesser Park, not so much for outright parking (even if it was a Friday night) than for Vicki to pillow her head on Avery’s letterman-jacketed shoulder till its ache was mitigated, while La Düsseldorf’s “Silver Cloud” pulsed through the car speakers.

 

“Better?” he asked when her head began to bob with the beat.

 

“Not so bad... just wish I’d done better.”

 

“Try your best and you will, next time.”

 

“Hope so...  Hunh—the Grigster’d say ‘Don’t hope so.  Feel so.’”

 

“She’s right.  Feeling gets you halfway there.”

 

Vicki began to giggle as Bomber’s arm, suiting deed to word, started to tighten around her no-longer-so-chilled body.

 

*

 

Far less of a giggle was Saturday’s confab outside the Triville Acme hardware store, where Robin again worked parttime when not checking that her Sweet Babboo stayed untampered-with in the Acme parking lot.  She was out there again during her lunch break, not to eat but to gnarl with Fiona (brought by Aunt Polly Rumpelmagen) and Sheila-Q (who’d run up to Triville after the track team’s morning practice/postmortem) but again minus PoonElly (off schmoozing in Shoreward with the Ghastly Trio).

 

The confabbers could’ve spent the whole weekend debating which of them was most pissed-off.  Feef felt utter disgust with Poon’s schmoozery; Robin felt no bliss at missing lunch after having had a dyspeptic breakfast; and Sheila felt even more livid than usual with her sister Amelia (once Mealy-Mouth, then Taters, currently “Glisten”) whom S-Q swore was the one who should’ve been grounded, and for life if not beyond.

 

“I’m not skipping lunch to hear you bellyache, Quirk!  Even if lunch’d give me a worse bellyache than I already got.”

 

“Then you’re better off skipping it, Robbo—all those fried foods you’re always scarfing—”

 

“Uffa!  You know damn well frying in olive oil makes everything healthier!”

 

“You and your olive oil!  ‘Skip to my Lou, oh Pahhhhp-eye—’”

 

“I’ll skip onto you till your eyes pop!”

 

“(Speaking of skipping,)” Fiona interceded, “(we’ve still got time to bail on the show.  Is it worth going through with this bullshit at the Pit?)”

 

“Feef, we’ve been over this and over this, and I for one am over it.  Want to play on a real-life stage in front of a real-live audience?  Well, this is our chance—let’s take it!  Besides, we told Britt we would.”

 

“Hate to agree with a popeyed bellyacher—”

 

“—yeah, let’s not get into that habit—”

 

“—I’m talking here!—but she’s right (for once).  This is our best shot—can’t let it slip.  You gotta have ‘experience’ if you ever wanna get a job or a gig or whatever.”

 

“(And what sort of gigs do you think we’ll get with this sort of ‘experience’?)”

 

“Well, we aren’t getting any with none.”

 

“Quit making me agree with you, Quirk—and don’t lean on my car!!”

 

“Good Lord, Robbo, I barely grazed it!”

 

“(Okay okay okay—are we at least agreed on us all wearing leather jackets?)”

 

“—or suede—”

 

“(—yes, or suede—I’ll be wearing suede.)”

 

“You two go ‘suede out’—I’ll be wearing real leather, as usual.  So’ll Limey.”

 

“(She said.)”

 

“So why shouldn’t she?”

 

“(‘Cause I can’t tell what she’ll do anymore.  Britt could even have her wear a bustier corset, like that Feathershag skag did when she with the Runaways.)”

 

“Ooh, I wouldn’t mind wearing one of those myself onstage!”

 

“Haw!  You in a corset?  Maybe your grandma’s longline pantygirdle—”

 

“Hey!  I’d look a helluva lot hotter in a leather corset—or suede—than some people in this parking lot!”

 

“Too bad your kinkiest undies have Raggedy Anne on ‘em!  Maybe if you ask real nice ‘n’ sweet-like, you can borrow a pushup corset from ‘Glisten.’”

 

“You better not say she’s got more to push up in a bustier, ‘cause she does not.”

 

“Hey, I’ve always said you were ‘Sheila the Shameless Show-Off.’”

 

“And I’ve always said ‘Flaunt ‘em if you got ‘em,’ Robbo—maybe someday in the distant future you’ll be able to—”

 

“Well, you go right ahead with your B&D-ing, Quirk!  I’ll lace you up in that corset till your eyes really pop—even if it can’t make you any busty-er!”

 

“And maybe you’ll get a bigger fatter bellyache than the inflated one you’re already lugging around!”

 

Mr. Acme Assistant Manager stepped outside then to tell Robin to get back in; she and Q both looked miffed at this sudden curtailment of their daily epic argument; and “(Ewwwgh,)” went Fiona.  “(Now you two have given me heartburn...)”

 

*

 

That evening a much different kind of concert took place in Godsacre Auditorium at O’Dean Hall (“the Odeum!”) on the Kickshaw Conservatory campus.  It was a series of workshop productions by student ensembles, including Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, Dallapiccola’s Goethe-Lieder, Puccini’s one-act opera Il Tabarro, and a demonstration of Butoh: Japanese experimental performance art, staged by visiting instructor Asami Iwasa.

 

Vicki and Joss came to this concert not with their boyfriends (Bomber and P.J. having each sent regrets) but Felicia, who provided transport.  Her presence was less embarrassing than at Joss’s Sweet Sixteen since none of Vicki’s friends were on hand except Zerl and Keiko, here with Midge Monticello and the Nakayamas.  The adults sat in the row behind the teens—though Keiko’s parents were stationed right behind her, to preclude any flirting with college-age men.  “(Like she would,)” Zerl scoffed sotto voce.

 

It was Vicki’s first visit to O’Dean Hall, but she felt pleasantly at home in “the Odeum” even after Joss reminded her to watch out for the ghost of that arthritic Russian violinist.  (Oh shut up / You shut up.)  Godsacre Auditorium looked like an old-fashioned theater, putting Vicki in mind of the Silbergeld down in The City whose walls and ceiling had been speckled with bits of glitter like artificial constellations—“More Stars Than in the Milky W,” its cut-short marquee’d boasted.  How many movies had she seen there with Stephanie Lipperman (and what’d ever become of her? another ghost to watch out for?) back in seventh grade, three long years ago...

 

Three long years from now Vicki would be wrapping up her second semester of college, where she and Joss could be roomies and as many bunchkins as possible ought to go as well.  Though probably not Nonique, destined for a more highfalutin conservatory than Kickshaw; she’d declined coming here tonight so as to spend the weekend visiting her family in Riversgate.  Jenna too would most likely be someplace else, at a fancy art-and-design institute—leaving Vicki bereft of a big sister for the second time.  (Jenna’d wanted to come witness the Butoh, but her Zayde Leyva’s birthday was being celebrated in West East Bay.)  And three years from now Avery Loderhauser might be little more than a memory, which Vicki could only hope she’d be able to take in stride...

 

Noooo, this sort of thinking was too sad—like being reminded that everyone she’d ever loved was doomed to die, if they hadn’t already “passed over.”  Pressing an arm against Joss to reassure herself of that blessed sustenance, Vicki got a reciprocal press with the sub-vibe Did you catch a glimpse of Olga Tarasenka?—a name that sounded less Russian than Japanese.  Vicki glanced down the row past Zerl and was briefly startled to see Keiko chatting quietly with Ms. Ohara from VTHS, seated on her other side.  Maybe they belonged to the same interscholastic meteorological society?  Vicki looked forward to taking Ms. Ohara’s science classes as an upperclassman, presuming Mr. Dimancheff allowed her to survive Biology.  So say a silent prayer for Nonique’s safe return from Riverside—next week they’d be dissecting starfish.

 

Polite applause as a plainly-dressed student orchestra (no tuxedos or evening gowns) took its place in the Godsacre pit, and was joined there by a student conductor (no white tie or tails) rather than Maestro Monticello.  This was a workshop production, after all.  Vicki felt crew-techie dissatisfaction with the lack of dressiness—up until the Polovtsian dancers and their choral accompaniment took the stage and went to work.  Then she was again conveyed into the past, back to the Norroway Theater on Toronero Avenue; and even if Kickshaw’s ballet troupe didn’t quite measure up to Ms. Olivia Fischel’s company, it outshone and overshadowed high-school-caliber dancing.  Taking her further back to Ruth Page’s International Ballet at the Civic Opera House, where there’d been “Romeo and Juliet” and “Bolero” and “Carmina Burana”—“O Fortuna!”—and not-quite-seven-year-old Vicki drinking it all in from first note to last.

 

Kick.  Twirl.  Leap.  Dive.

 

Hop.  Spin.  Pounce.  Sway.

 

Skim.  Glide.  Float.  Soar.

 

I want to dance.  I want to be a dancer.

 

Then you must learn how, Miss.

 

So she and Gran had sub-said then.  So they echoed in the here and now.

 

It wasn’t too late for her to learn how, even if she’d long since lost hope of becoming a professional ballerina.  No second chance there; even if she could dial back the clock and start over again at Aunt Fritzi’s studio above the Joe E. Lewis Dinner Playhouse, that same unavoidable Klumsy Klutzerhood would lie in wait to trip her up and spurn her dreams.  “You’re sickling, you are SICKLING” Ms. Olivia’d said about her left ankle just before its sprain—whose residue still lurked in her physique (or was it physiognomy? Ms. Ohara would know) to rear up and render her lame.  As had happened just a couple months ago, and right in front of Avery.  (Though that’d led to his laying hands on her for the first time; so no regrets there.)

 

Okay, forget ballerinahood—but it wasn’t too late to learn how to dance.  She was only sixteen, a tenth-grader, signed up at Kickshaw for a summer month of avant-garde lessons with Octavia Fredericks who had the same initials as Olivia Fischel even if she went by “Tavey” and was herself just an undergraduate yet marvel at the significance of that similarity and why wasn’t Tavey up there dancing with the Polovtsians?  Vicki whispered an inquiry to Zerlina; “(She’ll be doing the Butoh)” Zerl replied.

 

That sounded like a dance move, like the Bump or Bus Stop or Electric Slide—show me, teach me, I want to learn it!  Vicki tried to quell her impatience through the next two acts and pay close attention to the singing in Goethe-Lieder and Il Tabarro.  Next year she’d take Vocal Music from Miss Sickles (no “sickling” there) and sign up for the Girls Chorus if not Concert Choir.  She’d sung soprano passably well with the Mixed Chorus at VW, and song and dance went together like... like... mac ‘n’ cheese.  (Ooh, gotta raid the fridge during tonight’s Queen Anne sleepover.)  So why didn’t Puccini include better dancing in his opera?  That one stevedore stepped on Giorgetta’s foot, for crying out loud!—hopefully as part of the play.  (This was a workshop, after all.)

 

(Up until the Butoh began.)

 

(Then it turned into a weirdshop...)

 

Onstage crept four figures who’d evidently been dipped in paste from head to toe before being shrouded in scruffy gray dustcovers.  Vicki couldn’t tell which was Tavey as they curled up in fetal positions, holding these while a bamboo flute and three-stringed lute became faintly audible.  The music’s volume rose v‑e‑r‑y s‑l‑o‑w‑l‑y as the four dustbunnies did likewise, their ascents punctuated by the irregular beat of a resonant drum.  And the way the figures rose, and moved, and began to shamble about—gaping like the skulljaws on Cheryl’s creeping-meemie amulet—struck simultaneous chords with Vicki and Joss.

 

They’re coming for you... they’re coming to get you...

 

Two years ago, on the evening before the Cicada Dance where Alex’d been crowned Queen, Channel 32 had broadcast Night of the Living Dead.  At Burrow Lane for their usual Friday sleepover, Joss had double-dog-dared Vicki to watch this for as long as she could endure it.  They’d been alone in the house; Ozzie and Felicia had gone out; Goofus was away with his pals Breezy and Patches, the three of them undoubtedly relishing what Channel 32’d advertised as “the most horrifying movie ever made.”  Nobody’d suspected that Vicki and Joss might sample it—for less than fifteen minutes, before snapping off the TV and half-mock-screaming upstairs to Vicki’s bedroom, where they’d half-mock-barricaded the door.  Yes, it had been a disturbing experience, but one they’d resolutely shaken off (and not shared with Alex) by the time they all left for the Cicada Dance on Saturday—though it would nibble at their subconsciouses when word came of Kim Zimmer’s attempt to hang herself.

 

Now here were four apparent ghouls risen from an invisible graveyard—or could they be stricken trees grown out of a polluted earth?  If the latter, they seemed ready to be uprooted if that would put them out of their misery.  If the former, at least Zayde Leyva wasn’t one of their number.

 

Jenna’d worried that he’d overexert himself on his birthday, grateful as he was at having lived to reach it.  He probably wouldn’t be called upon to blow out candles on a cake; observant Jews thought flames were symbolic of the soul, so let candles burn down and snuff themselves.  Vicki’d learned this not from Gran (who’d pinched them out with a moistened thumb and forefinger) but the Pomerantzes at Brenda’s eighth birthday party.  That’d also been the day the Peaches declared common cause against the Blue Meanies—if not Mrs. Kling, some of whose pupils thought she’d died long ago and was presiding over second grade in zombie form...

 

Quit thinking about Pfiester Park!  Concentrate on this Kickshaw concert!

 

But as Vicki watched the Butoh figures twist and contort in nonchoreographic patterns, she again recalled Miss Sandy’s Beginners class with its stress on shapes and movement.  “Is this really how ballerinas get started?” little Vicki’d wanted to know.

 

Some of them, yes.  And all of them have to know how to tell us stories using just their bodies.  Even when they wear fine costumes, the body does the real work.  And it has to show us in so many different ways—quick and slow, large and small, thick and thin.  Always based on shapes and movement...

 

The four dustghoulies g‑r‑a‑d‑u‑a‑l‑l‑y returned to their graves—or, if trees, sank back into the earth—resuming fetal positions as the flute, lute and drum dwindled down to meditative whispers.

 

Then pound-pound-pound went Gemma Symes-Stone’s palms as she led an ovation, in which Zerlina joined wholehandedly before whistling with fingers-in-mouth as each anonymous androgynous figure took a bow.  Not only Tavey, her friend Perrin Barends and visiting instructor Asami Iwasa, but Lee Leichtfuss whom Zerl offhandedly identified as her Brawny Strapping Robust skating partner at Vicki’s Roller Disco gala.

 

(You sure can conceal a lot with head-to-toe paste and a scruffy gray dustcover.)

 

Concert completed, the audience began to disperse.  Midge—after swatting the back of her daughter’s head for “behaving like a Jersey girl”—started up the aisle with Felicia; Zerl took off in the opposite direction, bound for backstage (if not New Jersey); Keiko and her folks chatted in hushed tones with Ms. Ohara—maybe about the Butoh, maybe about the weather.

 

Joss and Vicki, going out to the Odeum lobby, stood by its great clock whose chimes at midnight supposedly heralded Death’s clickety-clack dance to a grisly violin.

 

“Too early for us to see Fiddler on the Loose,” sighed Joss.

 

“Or do anything else!” griped Vicki.  “If we were college students and had our licenses and a car, we could drive to a disco and do some real dancing!  I’m all revved up for it—and ‘the night is still young!’  Any chance we can talk Mom into dropping us off at La Bugaboo or the Magnetic Pole?”

 

“Are you kidding?” said Joss.  “With all the hungry zombies waiting out there?”

 

*

 

“(I didn’t do it!)” Fiona kept insisting on Friday the 28th, after news spread that the AnaRCHonda Pit had burned down “in mysterious circumstances” very late the previous night.

 

“Oh, like you didn’t think about doing it!” Robin grimaced.

 

Friday evening the Dopesters were at Park West, where much of the buzz was not about Patti Smith (making her City debut) or her Easter album (released last month) or its single “Because the Night” (cowritten with Bruce Springsteen) but the loss of the Pit.  Everyone agreed it must’ve gotten arsonized; I.M.A. Camera, who’d “been there and seen it all,” said a lot of fire engines had gathered round to keep the blaze from spreading and ensure that nobody got hurt, but made no effort to extinguish the Pit till it was incinerated.

 

So had this been a torch job by the mob, as Sylvia’d practically predicted would happen?  Or had the cops cut out the middlemob and handled the ignition themselves?  A somewhat-familiar girl named Marlene could be heard alleging that Cobwebs & Strange had set the fire in order to collect on insurance; she knew a guy who assessed such claims and found flaming fraud all the time.

 

Two people who offered no opinions at Park West were Sheila-Q and PoonElly.  Q was somewhere else, making up for dates-missed-while-being-grounded.  Poon had simply blown them off, Psmith and Dopesters alike.

 

Since falling in with the Ghastly Trio, Elly May Pilchard had “advanced” from Izzy-Whizzy to Mauly the Mauler and her snortastic set.  While Britt might not have ever been a dyed-in-the-wool Traverser, Millicent Carstairs was engulfed in that cokehead coterie to the full extent of her nasal passages.  While the Traversers might be shorn of their Astral Slacker figurehead, they were now being shepherded by a goateed gnome called “Mr. Bonks” who (if rumor was true) was keeping the snowflake channels open wide in Hereafter Park.  And while the Sister Dopesters might pride themselves in having never met a weed they didn’t like, Elly May helped herself to everything pharmaceutical passing by.  Remember her at the Mayerling last summer, sorting through that candy dish heaped high with pills; astounding (in bitter retrospect) that she hadn’t emptied its entire contents into her pockets for later consumption.  Just as she’d as-good-as-done with her “Sugar Pop,” Fiona...

 

Come on now, try and understand   The way I feel under your command Take my hand as the sun descends   They can’t touch you now-ow   Can’t touch you now-ow Can’t touch you now-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-owwwww...

 

Nor can she; not anymore.

 

So forget the pain, ignore the ache, pluck hell out of your air bass and prepare to move on.  Just as Psmith was advising the Park West crowd (about the AnaRCHonda Pit, but applicable to multiple situations): “If it burns, build another one.”  Ditto if it’s blown off and gone away.  Like dust in the wind, if you care to segue from New Wave to Prog Rock.  And without crashing the wrecks, now that you’ve withdrawn from what won’t have to be backed up on a real-life stage in front of a real-live audience.

 

Not at the late Pit, at any rate...

 

Saturday afternoon in the soundproof cellar at Villa Neapolitan, Fiona pounded her real-life Fender along with Iggy Pop’s The Idiot (produced by David Bowie, playing keyboards and synthesizers) at high volume on the basement turntable:

 

I’m a mess without my China girrrrl   Wake up mornings, there’s no China girrrrl I’d hear hearts beating loud as thunder   And I’d see stars crashing dowwwwn

 

Fighting throughout this to purge her memories of a spiked-limeade screechathon at last year’s Jambalaya—“I ain’t no china teacup (but you’re still just a mug)”—just like she’d replaced Deep Purple footwear with Converse All-Stars; but Iggy wasn’t helping:

 

And when I get excited, my little China girl says   “Oh sugar, just you shut your mouth”        She says “Shhhhhhh...”

 

Robin, home from her shift at Acme Hardware, appeared as the song and album side ended.  Popping a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that she’d bought with her own wages and fake ID, but would never drink while driving or even standing beside her Sweet Babboo; so Fat Bob grumblingly overlooked this infraction, despite his being a Hamm’s devotee.

 

“So,” remarked Robin after taking a long swig, “Cucaracha” [i.e. I.M.A. Camera] “phoned me at the store.”

 

Fiona, unplugging her bass from the Ampeg SVT mega-amp: “(More news about the Pit?)”

 

After a longer swig: “Sort of.  There’s talk about turning Halfsie’s, that—” [flip of limp wrist by the hand not holding the Pabst] “—bar on West Sussex, into a punk club.  Hasn’t heard if Monte and the Cobwebs crew’d be involved.  But y’know, they are just up the street from the joint.”

 

Loading a bong with good old stuff: “(Don’t suppose that Marlene chick was right about the insurance?)”

 

Draining the PBR can and crushing it with a mighty drummer’s grip: “Well, I hope their asses were insured no matter who set the fucking fire.  But what I wanna know is—what do we do about Downbite?”

 

Searching for a mislaid lighter: “(We’ve still got you, me, and Q.  Forget Cramps.  Even better, forget Poon...)”

 

Joining in the search: “What about Groningen?”

 

“(Only if she’s by herself.  We are not gonna be a goddamn backing band for the Queen Bitchy Minstrels.  We lucked out, even if the Pit didn’t.  That fire was a sign.)”

 

At that exact moment Dopester hands each laid hold of a Bic and flicked it alight, just as Dopester eyes met and Dopester voices chorused: “How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?”

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Return to Chapter 52                          Proceed to Chapter 54